The Unnumbered Hero
by Akira Shinji
Summary: When the goddess Cosmos was picking out her heroes, she overlooked a certain young man. Fate didn't leave him out of the fight, though...
1. Reboot

A/N: Wow that was a really, really long break. What you are reading now is actually the second version of "The Unnumbered Hero", updated after three years in the hopes that the story would actually be finished and much better written(?) this time. I am going to leave the previous chapters up for the next week (until 10/3) before taking them down. More info in the ending A/N.

* * *

Ba-dump. _Ba-dump. Ba-dump._

_What's wrong with me today?_ Sora thought frantically, dashing the last few steps to the small island, tethered to their childhood playground by a rickety wooden bridge like an appendage. He stumbled over to the paopu tree, gripping onto its irregularly shaped trunk with trembling hands. This was by far the worst attack so far, and he clutched at his chest, fingernails digging into his skin even through his shirt. It felt like his heart was straining at its sinewy chains, trying to break free of the rib cage. It took his breath away, the sensation leaving his throat dry and closed off.

Sora slumped from the tree, sitting on the dusty earth. Maybe that would center him, keep him steady, but it only made him dizzy. _Today is just not my day,_ he supposed, wincing. _How can I let Riku and Kairi see me like this?_ After all, Kairi had been the one to call them out to the island today; she said she had something to share with them.

Black dots were beginning to form in his vision, obscuring the ocean dyed red by the sunset. Sora felt a deep shiver rack his body and realized he had been sweating profusely, a cold sweat. As the sun fell over the horizon, his body temperature fell with it. He clutched at his chest, where he felt the deepest chill. Just as he closed his eyes…

"Sora? Hey… _Hey!_" A hand shook his shoulder forcefully, and though his vision was nearly faded, a blur of icy green when Sora tried to look into his friend's eyes suggested it was Riku who had found him. "Stay with me. What the heck happened to you?"

Sora tried to stand up, but his pained heart ordered him to be still, and he fell back to the ground. "I don't know. I've been feeling really weird all day." He tried to put on a reassuring grin, but he could not hold it for long. "It just got worse and worse as the day went on."

Suddenly, there was a burst of fire in his veins, emanating from the center of his being. He didn't realize he was screaming; he could no longer sense anything outside the fire; could not feel himself clawing at his heart, only the sensation of his heart trying to claw out of _him._

He didn't realize it when he told Riku "I'll be okay," didn't realize it when his conscience finally slipped away.

* * *

"Sora…? _Sora!_"

His body lay eerily still on the sand-dusted earth. Like a… Riku would rather not finish the thought, for fear that it would be true. He felt his heart pounding hard against his chest. _This can't be happening._ He lifted a hand and placed two fingers at the base of his friend's neck. _Not Sora. Don't take Sora._ To Riku's relief, there was still a steady pulse going, albeit a slower beat than was normal.

From behind him, there was a stifled sniffle. Riku stood up and turned around. Kairi was standing at the end of the bridge. Her hands were shaking; she was holding a blue plastic tray with a pitcher full of her newest culinary invention and three floral paper cups. Riku saw her lips tremble, her eyes wander from him to their friend on the ground. She set the tray down slowly with unsteady hands.

"He was just tired," Riku said quickly. "Let's leave him for a bit."

"Don't…" Kairi said, clearly fighting to maintain a steady voice. "Don't lie to me. I saw what happened."

Riku shifted his eyes away, feeling guilty for trying to reassure her with a lie. "He'll be all right," he answered quietly. _He has to be._ He sat down next to him, and Kairi went over to join him.

"Um…" she started. "Shouldn't we…you know, call a doctor? What if it's something serious?"

"I get the feeling it's not something medical science can explain," Riku said. "Just a hunch… There has to be some reason for why his body would act up so violently, though."

Kairi nodded before losing herself in her thoughts. "I feel like I should know what's happening. I just have…the weirdest sense of déjà vu right now." She was silent for a moment, then reached for the pitcher she had brought. "I suppose Sora's going to have to wait a bit longer for a paopu smoothie…" She poured out a glass for the three of them, handing one to Riku and setting the other by Sora's still hand. Riku noticed that her eyes watered a bit as she did so.

Before the two could take a sip, a great flash of light emanating from Sora's chest pierced their vision, accompanied by a sound not unlike that of glass bells shattering. The two jumped to their feet, drinks forgotten, as they saw a silver shadow crawl out of Sora like billows of smoke. They began to solidify into a human shape, and a black cloak formed around its body. The figure looked up at Riku with blue eyes all too familiar to him—the familiar animosity, the familiar resistance and contempt filling them as he looked over the older boy. The cloaked figure reached up to remove his hood.

"We meet again, Riku, Kairi."

* * *

Kairi felt something tugging at her will, the same supernatural feeling from her moment of déjà vu just minutes ago. As she spoke, she noticed that the words were not quite her own—they felt like they were hers by the sheer fact that it was her lips moving, but at the same time, they felt alien. "You're…Roxas," she said simply.

"I know, thanks," he said a bit curtly, but with a smile. The rage-filled fire within his eyes faded when he looked over at her, sending a shiver down her spine. "I didn't really expect you to remember my name, so I'm a bit flattered."

"How did you break out?" Riku said coldly. "You nearly killed Sora in the process. Or is that what you intended?"

"I guess you're still overprotective of him," Roxas sneered. "I didn't hurt him on _purpose._ I didn't even mean to pull a jailbreak. It wasn't exactly a pleasant experience for me, either." He zipped his coat down to reveal a wound on his chest in the shape of a hand, as if he had been seized there and forcefully dragged somewhere else.

"Roxas…" Kairi realized now why she felt like she could talk to this stranger as a familiar. From within her, Naminé said to the other Nobody, "You've changed. You reek of bitterness and anger now."

Roxas shifted his gaze away from the girl. "As an insider looking out…as opposed to an outsider looking in...I saw a lot of things in Sora's heart that were unsettling. A lot of crimes he didn't even realize he had committed—crimes that no one else can be held accountable for, even if they weren't directly his fault.

There was no obscuring his actual feelings in that sentence: he still wholeheartedly blamed Sora. "If you were the one who had such a wide perspective on the matter," Kairi and Naminé countered, "then you must have realized that he would never have done what he did if it meant he would be hurting someone. He would have found another way."

"Maybe I don't know Sora as well as you did," Roxas replied, a bit sadly, "but if there's one thing I learned in the single year of life I was allowed to have, it's that no one can be trusted. Friends lie. Your boss lies. Your enemies will do anything to get you out of the way." He turned away from the two. "I'm done here. I have more important things to attend to." A swirling mass of darkness opened up before him.

"Damn it, wait!" Riku shouted, drawing the Way to Dawn, but it was too late; Roxas had already disappeared with a sweep of his cloak. There would be no finding him now.

* * *

The fire was replaced with a peculiar feeling of emptiness, Sora noticed as he stirred into consciousness. His chest burned like hell, though, and he groggily placed a hand over the wounded area. It was warm, much warmer than the rest of his body. He opened his eyes, and after a moment, the faces of Riku and Kairi came into focus. Although Riku's face was stoic as usual, Sora had learned to recognize when something had disturbed him; Kairi's expression was much more openly concerned. The odd thing was that neither of them looked particularly worried or frightened; it was more like curiosity.

"Sora, are you okay?" Riku asked, almost cautiously. He lent him a hand as he tried to sit up.

"Yeah, I feel…" What did he feel? He felt so perfectly _numb_ at the moment that he couldn't even answer "fine". "Honestly, I feel like there's a giant hole where my emotional capabilities should be. Imagine that, huh?"

Riku and Kairi exchanged glances. "Yeah, about that…" Kairi started.

"That was actually a pretty accurate statement," Riku said when she didn't continue. "I think we can explain why your body's been going haywire all day."

"All right. Shoot."

"Well, your Nobody might have broken out of you. To put it bluntly, anyway."

It felt like a sack of bricks had fallen out of the sky and landed on Sora's head. And a piano, for good measure. "Excuse me?" he said, utterly nonplussed.

"Yeah, sorry about that," Riku said, looking abashed. "I tried to stop him, but you know how efficient the Organization was with quick getaways. I'm not really sure if it's actually related to any changes with your 'emotional capabilities,' but it might explain any other weird feelings you have."

"That's not even the half of it," Kairi continued, and both boys looked at her. "The reason I called you out here… I'd completely forgotten about it because of this whole mess." She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small note. "I found this in a washed-up bottle this morning. I think it's from Radiant Garden."

She handed it to Sora, who at this point didn't think anything else could shock him. His fingers gripped the paper tightly as he read:

_Sora, Riku, Kairi—_

_Something weird has been going on lately here in Radiant Garden and, from what I hear on the streets, in some other worlds as well.__ Leon went out two weeks ago to "attend to something for a few minutes" and never came back. There was no sign of a fight or anything. And then I saw Cloud a few days back, but when I went to say hello, he mysteriously vanished… Tifa and Aerith have been feeling these negative vibes, and that fairy-girl Yuna said as much, too._

_Guys, I heard that a kid from your island went missing recently. Name starts with a T? Call me crazy, but I'm getting a bad feeling that all of this is connected somehow. The disappearances are all too sudden and close together to be a coincidence._

_Get over here as soon as possible! I'm getting the creeps just thinking about it._

—_Yuffie_

Sora looked up from the letter, handed it to Riku, and waited for him to go through it. "Tidus did go out to sea a week ago," Sora said when he saw that he was finished going through the message, "and he never made it back, did he?"

"Just a little under a week ago," Kairi affirmed.

"And," Riku added, "under the same mysterious circumstances as his father. I wonder if that changes anything..."

"We need to investigate," Sora decided. "There's too much we don't know. From the way Yuffie put it, there's something connecting everyone who vanished, forming a pattern of some sort."

"So we need to find out what that pattern is," Kairi finished.

All three of them nodded. "Right. To Radiant Garden!"

* * *

A/N: I believe the last time I updated this story was back in 2009. Oops.

Even though I officially decided to quit the project around mid-2010, I still got a lot of feedback on this story, so I am grateful to those of you who kept hope in this story and waited for its next installment. This comeback is for you guys, because I wouldn't have gone on with it otherwise.

I'll try to be more diligent in the future.

I will be posting longer Author's Notes, as well as the original texts, on my LiveJournal (akira_shinji), particularly for comments I want to make regarding things that may spoil the later Kingdom Hearts games. Check it out for this chapter's comments!


	2. The Package

A/N: Today's a special day for me, so here's a new chapter. In-depth author notes for this chapter should be up on LJ sometime soon.

Enjoy!

* * *

Crash.

_He'd been falling for what felt like hours, and the end of those hours had finally brought him—painfully—to a halt on the hard ground. Water droplets scattered all around him, as if he'd landed in a large puddle, and he felt several cracks in his bones on impact. Always a pleasant feeling. He muttered three or four Curaga spells until the excruciatingly painful sensation of his broken bones dulled into a normal, throbbing pain and he could move his limbs again._

_There was no real reason for why things ended up the way they did. Before he knew it, Sora found himself estranged from his friends once again, this time with no way for them to reach each other. The arbitrariness of fate was beginning to make itself evident, Sora thought with disappointment as he lay motionless on the soaking wet ground, looking up at a sky filled with nothing but storm clouds and a single, pitiful ray of light._

"Great. What am I supposed to do now?"

* * *

Sora, Riku, and Kairi had set out from Destiny Islands in the gummi ship just fine. They'd made the passage to their destination just fine. Landed in Radiant Garden just fine. Walked over to Merlin's house _almost just fine, interrupted by a few measly Shadows, but not obstructed by anything too big for them to handle. Yuffie had greeted them, not with her usual cheerful welcome, but guardedly, only opening the door a crack and pulling them inside the room hastily._

That was the first sign something was wrong.

Just as the door shut behind them, Sora had felt the tension in the air like a heavy fog. When he thought back on it, he wasn't surprised, given the situation. He remembered noticing in particular that Leon was absent, just as Yuffie had said, and others outside of the Restoration Committee were present. Tifa looked absentmindedly at the far wall from where she sat. Over in the corner, just above one of Merlin's many stacks of books, floated three fairies whom Sora hadn't expected to see again: Yuna, Rikku, and Paine. They stayed apart from the rest of the group, conversing quietly amongst themselves. Cid was attacking the keyboard with more violence than usual as Aerith looked on nervously.

"Kind of a solemn air in here, for such a big reunion party," Riku commented quietly, mostly to himself. That was the second sign.

At once, everyone looked over at the three new arrivals with such simultaneity that Sora felt an uneasy shiver run down his spine, disappearing as quickly as it had come on. The third sign.

"Yeah, well, there's a reason for that," Cid grunted, the twang in his voice more pronounced than usual. "Things've been rough around here the past week or so. People disappearin' without a trace, not knowing if you're gonna be next."

"A lot of people?" Kairi asked, shocked.

"It only appears like a few," Aerith explained. "If you look at the numbers in a single world."

"Combine them with some other weird cases elsewhere," Yuffie went on, "and we've got a problem."

"How do you know what's going on in the other worlds?" Riku questioned.

"Cid's been keeping contact with some others we've met long ago," Tifa said, gesturing to the computer. "People who used to be from around here, but went their separate ways for whatever reason. "Leon knew a few guys who live in Twilight Town now, but I don't think they were very close."

"They weren't too friendly in their response," Cid said gruffly, "but what I did get out of it, they've been having some sort of trouble, too. Leon's _good friend_ Seifer spotted someone suspicious, but then went on with some crap about how their 'Discipine Committee' could handle themselves _just_ fine."

"Yeah, that sounds like Seifer," Sora said, imagining the blond man's condescending glare and assertive tone perfectly in his head.

"Has anything strange happened on the islands?" Aerith asked them, and Sora recognized the hint that Yuffie had dropped in her letter. "We have a theory, but we need to account for every detail. Anything you can tell us would be helpful."

The three exchanged uneasy glances, then Sora admitted, "A kid went missing while he was out at sea. Almost on the same day his dad disappeared years earlier. There was another person out with him. He just said that…he just didn't come back to the surface."

"Did he drown?" Yuffie said, a bit tactlessly.

"No way," Kairi said. "Tidus practically lives in the water. There's no way anything bad could have happened to him in the ocean. Wakka would have known."

At the mention of Tidus' name, Rikku made a squeaking noise, immediately stifled by Paine's hand slapping across her mouth. "Don't upset Yuna," Paine said to Rikku, quietly and threateningly. Yuna made no sign of hearing her; she seemed lost in her own mind, wistful and sad. _All of these people are so tightly interconnected,_ Sora realized with some surprise. _I never would have thought._

"Wait just a minute." Sora turned to Riku, who was calm as ever, in one of his contemplating moods. "Do you have proof that all these instances are related to one another?"

"Like Aerith said, we have a theory," Tifa said, looking at Yuna with some sympathy. "We think that they—whoever _they_ are—are targeting people we met in the distant past. They've taken Leon, Cloud, and Tidus, as far as we know, and they at least tried to go after Seifer and maybe Wakka. Setzer and Vivi said they lost contact with a couple of acquaintances recently, as well."

"I suppose it's a start," Riku conceded. "Although I'll admit I still don't see a very strong connection."

"Well, we're not going to wait for any more incidents to prove it," Yuffie retorted.

"Can you figure out any sort of motive?" Kairi asked.

"It's hard to figure out a motive when you don't know the culprit," Paine pointed out. Rikku vehemently nodded her agreement.

Yuna, who had been silent until this point, seemed to just realize something. She asked with sudden abruptness and alarm, "Yuffie, did you lock the door after letting them in?"

Suddenly Sora felt a powerful force from behind him, but he didn't have time to look back, because an instant after he noticed it, he felt something seize him by the hood and thrust him away from his friends and toward the door. A single wing, velvety and dark as the night sky, enfolded him, obscuring his vision and keeping him from moving.

"My apologies for the intrusion," a smooth voice Sora recognized as Sephiroth's drawled, not sounding apologetic at all. "I thought I'd let myself in, as _somebody_ forgot to lock the door. I doubt you'll mind too much, as we're all having a reunion anyway."

"Actually, we do mind," Sora heard Aerith say with uncharacteristic coldness. "Would you like to come back another time? Say, in a thousand years."

"Still holding a grudge, I see," Sephiroth chided. "Well, I have a package to deliver, so I guess I'll accept your offer and take my leave."

"Wait wait wait," Yuffie cut in. "You're not taking him anywhere."

"I'd like to see you try and stop me." Before anyone could raise any further objections, Sora felt a stretching sensation in his entire being, darkness leaking into his vision before rendering him completely blind, distorting and warping him away from reality. He felt like he was falling, falling away forever…

* * *

The room stared blankly at the one spot where Sora had been standing just a moment before, unable to say anything out of sheer horror and disbelief before Cid finally broke the silence.

"Well, shit. There goes our theory."


End file.
